Bryan Dulaney from JVEruption posted a thorough review and shares feedback on his review of  Infusionsoft. I wanted to pick it apart and speak to a few topics that he raised about Infusionsoft.

I don’t know how else to say it but to say it: you got to automate your business if you want to make serious cash. Anyone who is spending time managing their e-mail database manually is either not too bright or simply incredibly stubborn. Add to that manually processing sales and you’ll definitely be operating your business in the dark ages. It simply doesn’t make sense to operate your business in any other way other than complete automation. This is exactly the leverage that InfusionSoft gives you with their comprehensive software services. I liken it to Ron Popeil’s “set it and forget” mantra as this is pretty much what you end up doing with your website marketing efforts. You simply set up the program with your particular website information and e-mail database and the software does the rest. This software is incredibly invaluable and will guarantee that you take your business to the next level.

Bryan has a point — business is not just about choosing a solution and sticking with it, it’s about the amount of effort you pour into it and the results you get. Infusionsoft gets results! Infusionsoft is that intelligent marketing solution that makes all these systems talk to each other.

Like many have discovered, the software is so powerful, it takes a bit of configuration and setting up to be able to rest comfortably. This is where he shares the less than favorable side of powerful CRM, email marketing and eCommerce software:

The only real downside to using InfusionSoft is that you may have to manually set a lot of the systems up the first time you begin using it. This can be pretty time consuming and may even make you bang your head against the wall couple of times, but once you get everything up and running you’ll make up the time spent very quickly as the software begins to do its work.

This is true, new customers need to budget time to learn the interface (we try to be intuitive), practice with how follow up sequences work and toy with your first campaign before digging into the meat of the business. Following the first week or so, you should be ready to hit the big switch and turn on automation for your business. We’re always improving and making the software more valuable, intuitive and exciting. We do this by accepting top ideas from customers, reviewing customer surveys and simply just being plugged into the needs of entrepreneurs and small businesses.

He concludes –

Simply put, I’m a fan. If you’re serious about having a business that runs like a well oiled machine, then you need to automate it. Personally, I can’t think of any better service out there to do this than InfusionSoft.

Thanks, Bryan, for this great review. We can’t wait to hear of your success and transform your business into a case study!

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Customers must be happy if they recommend their software and would be interested in more services from the small business marketing software company, Infusionsoft. In a survey performed by Infusionsoft, 900 respondents stated that they recommend their software to others and would interested in additional services if they were presented to them. Infusionsoft users also shared the strong points of their software:

• Quickly segment marketing lists;
• Manage and run multi-faceted campaigns
• Organize and automate sales and
• “Manage the chaos of running a small business.”

Infusionsoft’s impressive track record of delivering value to customers and upholding their commitment to customer satisfaction doesn’t end there. They recently reduced prices of their software to make their email marketing solution much more affordable, lower risk and easier to use for entrepreneurs. In addition, they backed up their solution with a very simple Double Your Sales Guarantee — assuring to new customers their software and small business marketing strategies work.

[Source: Survey Shows 95% of Infusionsoft Customers Recommend Its Automatic Follow-Up Solution]

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For people considering Infusionsoft, a major obstacle was the upfront price which was required to pay for consulting. These consulting services are now optional for Infusionsoft customers, which is a huge benefit for everyone involved. Infusionsoft relaxed their offering to be more realistic for entrepreneurs to attain the software and grow their business on their terms.

A few quick benefits for these changes that new and existing customers can expect:

• If you’re a Pro, you can pass Go! — That is, if you know what you’re doing or are familiar with the needs of configuring a small business CRM application, shopping cart software or email marketing campaigns, you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. No worries if you’re not a pro, as plenty of helpful resources and friendly customer service representatives are standing by to help.
• No B.S.! — Most CRM solutions out there has fine print, hidden charges or otherwise unauthorized, unexpected fees. Not Infusionsoft, what you see is what you get. With the ability to upgrade, downgrade or cancel anytime, there is no risk, no problem.
• Customer Service Oriented Focused. — The new pricing changes will afford superior service that is unheard of in the marketing software industry. By allowing customers to choose exactly what services they want, when they want to upgrade and a very straightforward pricing plan, Infusionsoft users will receive substantially higher levels of customer service. It’s in Infusionsoft’s best interest to reward loyal customers and to earn the repeat business of new customers. How? A great product with amazing customer service.

To learn more about Infusionsoft’s pricing, pricing changes or overall price, visit their pricing page. If you need additional services, you may consider those options. Additional services are optional.

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This is a response to the critique published on this blog, “Infusionsoft Customer Service SUCKS!!!“

Infusionsoft has always had (and always will) have  a strong stance against spam — and whether it’s called “experimental opt in” or similar phrases, we have to abide by what is in the best interest of customers, recipients and the industry at large. We maintain a strict anti-spam policy, as evident in the Acceptable Use Policy, that is agreed to when the account is created.

It seems the crux of the matter was poor communication throughout the process. We’ve taken his feedback seriously and have improved it so any violators will be able to appeal their matters more civilly than taking it to a blog. Since we’ve made the improvements, we have not had any upset customers that we had to action for spam or abuse.

It’s important for customers to consider the end-user, recipient, subscriber, prospect and customer when creating follow-up sequences and opt-ins. Is it appropriate to have people opt in for a free product, then days later send them an email about how to get rick quick? It’s not appropriate and will result in very high ISP complaint rates, thus placing all our customers at risk.

It is with regret that we had to let this customer go, but it’s also with pride that we defend our email deliverability and reputation for the thousands of customers that choose Infusionsoft for their email marketing needs.

Here’s an official response Infusionsoft has on this matter:

We take Jonathan’s situation seriously and acknowledge his frustrations with the actions from our company. I’d like to clarify inaccuracies in Jonathan’s statements and be transparent about our processes as they relate to his experience. In summary, we provided software and consulting, and later eventually terminated his service due to non-compliance to our Acceptable Use Policy.

Our small business marketing solution provides email marketing services, in addition to a host of additional features in one integrated solution including sales force automation, affiliate program management, customer relationship management, voice and fax broadcasting, e-commerce services and more. Email marketing is one important aspect of our service which attracts many new clients to our company. Likewise, it’s an important asset to defend much like data integrity, data security and customer service.

As a company, we have a strong stance against abusive and illegal email marketing practices. We’re proud to meet and exceed industry standards (MAAWG) and regulatory compliance (CAN-SPAM Act), etc. Our policies that manage our client’s marketing practices are made clear in writing (Acceptable Use Policy, available at ‘http://www.infusionsoft.com/legal-stuff/aup’) as clients begin their usage of our service and are frequently reminded of the expectations and guidelines of our service within our software.

Having that said, we would like to substantiate the reasons why we terminated services for Jonathan. Please forgive my verbosity, but I would like to make it undeniable to interested readers that we provided services as agreed for Jonathan and have upheld our end of the agreement reasonably based on Jonathan’s email marketing practices.

Jonathan became a customer on 3/31/2008. We had a talented small business coach, Corey T., begin implementation of our software and services on 4/01/2008, and proceeded with daily interactions for Jonathan. We have confirmation that as of 4/14/2008, Jonathan successfully completed our implementation and was positioned to sell various products through our application’s shopping cart. We have documentation supporting these interactions.

Between 4/15/2008 and 1/6/2009, we had four successful technical support interactions between Jonathan and members of our support team addressing the needs of ‘how do I’ questions, for which we provide instant live support at no additional charge. During this period, it is reasonably assumed that our clients are successful with their implementation and usage of our software application – especially considering that we provide specific marketing emails engaging with our clients, toll-free customer support and have an easy to use customer support self-service help portal.

The acceptable email marketing industry standard for ISP complaint rate is 0.1%. That is, 1 email out of 1000 can permissibly be reported as “spam” from e-mail recipients. Examples of this type of complaint from recipients include the “Report Spam” for AOL Mail, “Spam” button in Yahoo Mail or “Junk” button in Hotmail.
On 1/6/2009, we detected a very high ISP complaint rate for Jonathan’s application due to a large mass mailing that was delivered to 54,233 recipients. Jonathan’s complaint rate for his email was 4.02%. Effectively, 40.2 times the acceptable complaint rate for our clients. We immediately suspended email services per our Acceptable Use Policy and notified Jonathan via email and telephone. Additionally, his application was placed into heuristic review by our Email Compliance Team for investigation of malicious use.

Our review indicated Jonathan collected several thousand e-mail addresses through an opt-in Web Form, omitting disclosure as to what kind of email, frequency of email or permission to send commercial email to said recipients. The context for opting into Jonathan’s marketing was a “Free Blackberry” according to the landing page. The email that was sent was a commercial email promoting a “get rich quick” offer, which is completely unrelated to the expectation of the recipients.

After a lengthy conversation between Jonathan and our team – we concluded that Jonathan should no longer be permitted to do business with us per our Acceptable Use Policy. Specifically, we terminated services for the following reasons:

– Blatant/Widespread Email Abuse: The only instance of this violation occurred with an unreasonably high amount of recipients (54K).
– Questionable Practices: The method of the lead capture was well outside our best practices, unethical by nearly anyone’s standards, and recipients validated this through their ISP spam complaints.
– Unsubscribe Padding: The email Jonathan sent included 16 line breaks (new lines) between his last sentence in an effort to “bury” or hide the legally-mandated unsubscribe link that we require.
– Questionable Email Content: The first three lines of the email, Jonathan includes the recipient’s IP address, date of opt-in and email address. This tactic employed by many abusers who intend to defend the purpose of their e-mail.
– Questionable Practices: The method of collecting his recipients gives rise to misleading email content (e.g., people expect a free item and receive get-rich-quick offers instead), which would violate regulations detailed in the CAN-SPAM Act.
– Questionable Practices: Jonathan has demonstrated that his email marketing was unrelated, poorly targeted and was not aligned in any way to our best practices or consulting services provided.

In most cases, we offer clients a three-strike policy as it pertains to their relationship with our company (three anti-spam complaints, service is terminated). However, we assess a series of factors of our client’s behavior such as the content of their email, the severity of the violation and likelihood of repeat occurrences. We perform a greater service to the millions of consumers and thousands of clients that we forcibly remove risks and liabilities such as Jonathan from our service. Our clients expect us to maintain superior email deliverability and healthy relationships with ISPs; to carry that out; we must terminate services to abusive clients, often regrettably.

Our initial email to Jonathan stated ‘Unsolicited Commercial Email,’ which was factually inaccurate; however, we followed up and clarified his termination was due to an excessive ISP spam complaint rate. My only statement (in error) was regarding Jonathan’s “willingness,” which was a misunderstanding on my part. As a point of clarification, we are not willing to continue our relationship with Jonathan based on the results of his actions and behaviors demonstrated regarding his marketing practices.

Despite Jonathan’s statement, we have provided the services for which he’s paid. We’ve provided excellent small business coaching, as records indicated; we’ve provided email services and full-service application with zero complaints or refund requests.

We would like to point out that it was only until we enforced our Acceptable Use Policy, Jonathan requested a refund. We have engaged and communicated to Jonathan about the cause for his termination of services. We will not be honoring this refund request due to the availability of services, nature of his request and to uphold the guidelines stated in the Acceptable Use Policy.

We understand and apologize for the poor experience that Jonathan endured, and have made changes to our email abuse communications in favor of being more detailed and friendly, provide more frequent communications within our software about our Acceptable Use Policy and will be deploying an external program committed to educating our clients on proper email marketing practices.

I hope this provides readers with detailed perspective on this matter.

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Welcome to the Infusionsoft Rocks blog! Many people have been curious about the success stories, real feedback and reviews that customers experience with companies.

To help illuminate the successes found on the Web and share the love our customers have, we started a blog just for that. It’s rather simple and not too much is going on right now on the blog, but in due time that will change.

This blog is hosted by Infusionsoft, but that doesn’t mean the content is. You’ll find legitimate, genuine and authentic experiences from Infusionsoft users. Yes, even a few critical ones, too.

Soon, there will be an interface so you can share your story with us, anytime and you’ll get the chance to showcase your Infusionsoft experience with others.

–Joe

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